Creativity in music is often seen as a product of inspiration. As is often believed, inspiration comes once in a while, and when it comes you’re lucky. There is no set time for when inspiration comes, so the only thing you can do is wait for it. When it is not there, you don’t get much creative work done and you may get stuck. This is often called writers block. Maybe this sounds familiar. Some artists said to have writers block for weeks or even months.

This inspiration-based view of creativity doesn’t sound very promising. It implies that you are fully dependent on inspiration to create anything. Without inspiration, you can try to make something, but it will be difficult and come out bad. This could be why you sometimes can’t get any work done. All in all, this is a very reactive view of creativity, as it implies that you have no control over when you are creative and when you are not. Luckily, there is a much more positive way to view creativity. This view sees creativity as a muscle. Let's go over that.